From day one, Marc Loving seemed to fit in with whatever lineup Ohio State had on the floor. That is no small achievement for a freshman.

“Well, first, he’s just really, really good. He’s a very, very good basketball player,” junior Sam Thompson said. “But he’s very unselfish, very selfless, and he really came in with the right attitude. When you do that, your talent’s able to show.”

What showed on Tuesday night was how quickly coach Thad Matta has come to trust the freshman from Toledo, enough to leave him on the floor for the last 15-plus minutes of the Buckeyes’ 72-68 overtime loss at Michigan State.

Loving played in place of top scorer LaQuinton Ross, and Matta said yesterday that it was not because of how Ross was playing.

“Those guys got us back in it, and we said, ‘Let’s ride ’em,’” Matta said.

With Ross and Lenzelle Smith Jr., the Buckeyes’ second-leading scorer, missing 14 of 18 field-goal attempts, Matta benched them with 10:42 left in regulation and went the rest of the way with Thompson and Loving, even after Ohio State’s deficit reached 55-38 with less than eight minutes to play.

In the next five minutes, Thompson and Loving alone outscored Michigan State 13-2 to start a 20-3 Buckeyes stretch run that tied the score at the end of regulation.

Thompson finished with a season-high 18 points. He also had eight rebounds, helping the Buckeyes outrebound the bigger Spartans 42-28. Loving had 10 points just three days after scoring a career-high 13 against Nebraska and a week after his three-point basket at Purdue was one of the daggers in a 19-7 run that turned the game Ohio State’s way in the second half.

He said after the Nebraska game that bringing fresh energy to the floor is what he and the other reserves must do.

“We feel like our energy off the bench can affect the game in a major way, whether it’s scoring, rebounding or … on defense,” Loving said.

The Buckeyes needed it at Michigan State after digging themselves a 17-point hole due in part to 17 turnovers. They had only four in the final 15:42, but the 21 in all, a season high, led to 26 points for Michigan State.

“As I told them afterward: I’m proud we came back, but we weren’t as sharp as we needed to be in this caliber of game to start the game,” Matta said. “We didn’t have a flow to us offensively. It was amazing in terms of bobbling passes and not delivering them where they needed to be. We were getting the ball where we wanted it; we just weren’t ready once it came to us.

“You can’t come on the road and have 21 turnovers. We’re not a good enough basketball team to waste possessions like that.”

Loving had only one turnover in 23 minutes.

“He brought a high basketball IQ in here. He was well-coached in high school, and he understands the game,” Matta said earlier this season. “He has a lot of energy in practice and when we’re doing things, and that’s always an indicator to me that the kid has a chance to be pretty good. You couple that with the fact that he asks questions, he wants to be coached, he wants to learn, and I think he’s got a pretty good feel now for what he needs to do when he goes in.”

Loving said the games are fun compared to practice.

“We have one of the best defenses in the country,” he said, “so when we practice (against) great defenders like Lenzelle, Aaron (Craft) and Sam, they’re lockdown defenders. The game is 10 times easier when you get on the court.”